Poyo's I wanna be good! Everyday Sketchbook

[poyo]

Not sure when I will have the time to do serious studies again :(
for now though, I'm doing 30 minute sketches.

fallen statue in a tunnel. All imagination, no refs.

[poyo]

quick sketch before bed.
I think I'm starting to get the hang of brush settings...

[poyo]

need to get back to humans soon. at least it's better than my first bird picture two pages ago.

15-30 mins

[poyo]

Guys, been absent for way too long. Let's see if I can stick with it this time around.

Both of these are 1 to 1.5 hrs in CS6

[OtherMuzz]

Lots of hard work going on in here!

I'll point out the biggest thing i think working on will get the best results. I think you understand perspective, but you seem to be ignoring it for the most part when it comes to drawing your characters, many of them feel like they are sitting in orthographic projection, and many also feel like they are floating in space without being grounded.

[poyo]

@OtherMuzz
thanks! I do know perspective, despite all the terrible practices I posted last year D:
I don't even know what I was thinking!
I'll be taking some figure drawing and portraiture classes over the summer, but it doesn't start for a couple weeks. I'm just practicing from photos for now. Any anatomy pointers for faces?

I really appreciate you stopping by and leaving feedback! :D


Here's my practice for the day, took 2 hours. Probably should've gone darker in places to up the contrast...

[poyo]

1.5 hours, I hope I'm improving because honestly I can't really tell... Can anyone please give me tips on how to make my paintings sharper? (books on studying edges?) I always have to fight the urge to softbrush everything at the end...

[Andantonius]

Hey there poyo! You've got a great sketchbook going on, keep up the good studies, you're making progress for sure! Just give it more time and patience, you'll be surprised how quickly you improve.

Here's a quick paintover to hopefully help you with your edgework a bit.

There's a few main points, most of which are written on the paintover, but mostly I think what you need to work on is cleaner edges, which is mostly about gaining a sensitive hand and brush control. Practice practice practice until you're comfortable with your tablet and your edges will automatically improve.
Edit: Also another thought on edges, a big part of edges is simply brush and control and being able to put the strokes where you want them, but another big part is having and understanding of form. When you're rendering light on form, edges are the direct result of what kind of form you're painting. For example, spheres have soft edges because they are soft, rolling forms, whereas cubes have hard edges between light and dark because they are sharp, planar transitions. The same happens on a human face or anything else, it just gets more difficult because the forms are something in-between spheres and cubes and they often melt together to form more complex forms with multiple edge types. SO, another key to improving your edges is to study the forms of your face; if you know exactly where one plane ends and the next begins, you can make a confident, clean edge between the two. The more you understand the planar structure of your subjects, the more you will know WHY the edges are the way they are, and the more confidently you will be able to paint them. :)

Also be more mindful of your values while painting and try to keep your lights and darks more separated to help achieve the feeling of light.

And lastly, I'd definitely recommend you work from reference if you're not already; painting from your head is good to see what you've learned, but to "study" you almost always want to be looking at something. Artists are students of life, so unless you're observing life you're pretty much just rehashing what you already know. Painting from reference will also help you with your edges a lot because you can see the edges right in front of you and can do your best to mimic them.

Edit edit: Also, if you're specifically studying portraits right now, I would highly recommend you watch Stan Prokopenko's tutorial videos on the subject: [Link]. They are some of the best information you'll find online, they're free, and he covers both overall head structure as well as the individual features. I think going over these will greatly help you understand planar structure and improve your edgework. :)

Sorry this is a bit hastily written, I've gotta run in a second here. Let me know if any of that doesn't make sense and I'll try and explain better. Keep up the great work, can't wait to see more studies! :D

[OtherMuzz]

You should totally drop that into a separate thread on edges Andantonius:). Great explanation.

Keep it coming poyo :).

[poyo]

@Andantonius Thanks so much! I know you said you had to run but you came back and edited like three times to tell me everything. I thought a lot about what you said and watched the videos, and I'm also taking some portraiture and figure drawing classes with live models. these last few portraits were from photos, no way my imagination portraits are that good lol
But I want to say I tried to keep your tips in mind when I'm drawing in my classes and they've really helped!

@OtherMuzz, thanks for your help and encouragement! I love this community :D

Now for the post of the day, I have tons of drawings from my class but I don't have a camera so sadly I won't be able to post them. but, I did a couple quick sketches to show how much the classes and you guys have helped me:

figures and faces from imagination with no refs

the left is before from a year ago, the right is after from today





1 is before, 2 and 3 is after I started following the constructive anatomy tips, 4 was me slipping into bad habits again, and somewhere between all that info I finally broke through and produced 5 today.

(I've never improved this quickly before in my entire life! seriously, thanks everyone!)

[poyo]

yay I'm improving I think...

sketches from imagination
need more practice on male faces

next think on list, anatomy of nose and ears

[poyo]

photostudy 1 hour

the photo itself was very saturated, I'm picking a better photo next time

[poyo]

imagination practice 1 hr, several anatomical errors here, will fix in the next practice





I see now one of my mistakes is because I need to do more nose studies.
still not perfect, but a start.

[poyo]

Since failing terribly at noses last time, I took a good look at my proportions and did some nose studies by looking at the underlying anatomy. here's noses from imagination at various angles and a revised imagination face (1hr)

still spotty on plane change between nose and face... guess another photostudy is in order

[Sublimus]

Love those digital muscle studies you did a page back. The nose studies are nice too. Keep up the hard work, it's already paying off!

[Trevor S.]

@OtherMuzz
thanks! I do know perspective, despite all the terrible practices I posted last year D:
I don't even know what I was thinking!
I'll be taking some figure drawing and portraiture classes over the summer, but it doesn't start for a couple weeks. I'm just practicing from photos for now. Any anatomy pointers for faces?

I really appreciate you stopping by and leaving feedback! :D


Here's my practice for the day, took 2 hours. Probably should've gone darker in places to up the contrast...

crazy, I did the same portrait, check my sketchbook! haha

[poyo]

@Sublimus and Trevor S. Thanks for stopping by! Your encouragement means a lot to me :)

@Trevor, I checked out your sketchbook, very cool! I like your textural style a lot.

after sleeping on it, I believe I kind of understand how the nose merges into the face now. Before my values were super wonky. Here's a quick 30 min sketch from imagination to show I finally learned my lesson.

next up: lips!

[poyo]

Spent the whole day learning edges

lip anatomy next :)

[poyo]

lips study and imagination face 1 hr

next: eyes and eye socket

if anyone sees this and feels like commenting, is the contrast ok? I think there must be a core shadow in the dark side of the face+cheeks, but I haven't gotten there yet with my studies so I don't know what shapes exist there.

[poyo]

went to see pacific rim, it was awesome! the visuals of the movie and the composition really inspired me. I did a quick sketch, I think the backlight setup was too ambitious though.

also forgot to remove the lighting source indicator/reminder I drew in there at the beginning before collapsing layers lol

going to take a few days off studies to work on my brush and edge control. need to learn to actually blend a smooth gradient, or everything I paint will always turn out streaky.